Divided Attention – Attention (PSY)

Before we dive into the effects of selective attention on perception, information integration and our ability to process information precisely, we need to define what we mean by selective attention and why to study attention in the first place.

00:01
Let’s take a look at now if we
start dividing our attention.
00:04
And we’ve all done this
before and this comesback to that initial
statement I made is thatwe have a certain amount
of resources in order todeal with attention and
what’s in front of us.
00:14
How do you decide how
much you can do at once?And we’ve all tried to
multitask before, right?So divided attention is the
ability to successfullyexecute more than one
action at a time.
00:24
Some are great at it.
00:27
You can be on the phone,
you can be drivingyour car, you could be
disciplining your kid,you know, and you’re adjusting
the radio, all at the same time.
00:34
And some people really
can’t do more than onething at a time without,
you know, messing up.
00:39
This gets us to things like
texting while driving.
00:42
That’s divided attention
or having your attentionaway from the road
and trying to text,most of us you
can’t either well.
00:50
So what we’re talking
about here ishow you manage that and what is the
amount that you can actually do?So inputs are from two or more
channels of information or modalities.
01:00
So what we’re saying here is it
doesn’t have to be two visual tasksor it doesn’t have to
be two auditory tasks,it can be you looking at the road and
you trying to converse with somebody.
01:12
So two different things that you’re
doing, two different modalities.
01:16
And the resource model of attention states
that we have a limited pool of resources.
01:21
And it doesn’t matter how
many tasks you attempt to do,you cannot exceed the
resources that you have.
01:29
So take out three different factors that
would impact performance of multitasking,first being task similarity.
01:35
So if it’s similar, multitasking
becomes increasingly difficult.
01:40
So if I’m asking you to cut an onion
and cut an apple at the same time.
01:46
They’re both cutting, they’re both
requiring the same type of activity.
01:51
The task is very much related, it becomes increasingly hard.
01:55
But if I ask you to cut a tomato
while visually looking at something,or trying to talk to somebody,
that becomes doable, okay?Now as the difficulty
of the task increases,the ability to multitask
decreases as well.
02:10
So trying to do an algebra
problem while trying torecite all the countries
of the world,fairly difficult, you
wouldn’t do either very well.
02:21
But if you’re looking at two simple
things like cleaning a tableand talking on the phone, we’ve
all done that before, right?Really, this is really
basic, and talkingon the phone is pretty
straightforward as well.
02:32
And there’s another thing called
task practice and this is whenif you practice something,you’re converting it from being a complicated
or complex task to something simpler.
02:42
So practice reduces resource
demand and it becomes automatic,or you initiate something
called muscle memory.
02:48
You see this quite
commonly in athletes.
02:51
They ask you to do something over and
over and over like in the example Ihave used in the previous lecture,
shooting free throws in basketball.
02:57
And they ask athletes to shoot
that shot over and over and over,thousands of times, so that
this motion becomes automatic.
03:06
And found in doctors
doing surgeries,in order to expedite and make
things go very, very fastbecause they need to think and be
doing motions at the same time.
03:16
They repeat, repeat, repeat
on cadavers or on othercarcasses from animals to
practice doing stitches orcomplicated surgeries so that they’re not
actually thinking about what they’re doingand they’ve implemented and converted a
complex task into something quite simpleand are using muscle memory.
03:33
Okay, so if we tie
all this together,it’s allowed us to
understand how it is that weactually filter out different
types of informationand how we can focus on
what’s pertinent to us whilestill bringing in other
types of information.
03:45
And it’s also allowed us to understand how
we’re able to manage our limited resources.

About the Lecture

The lecture Divided Attention – Attention (PSY) by Tarry Ahuja, MD is from the course Making Sense of the Environment.

Included Quiz Questions

Multi-tasking capability depends on all the following except for...?

...task difference.

...task difficulty

...task similarity.

...task practice.

...resource model of attention.

Running and listening to music requires what?

Divided attention

Selective attention

Shadowing

Automatic processes

Executive attention

Author of lecture Divided Attention – Attention (PSY)

Tarry Ahuja, MD

Customer reviews

(1)
5,0 of 5 stars

5 Stars

5

4 Stars

0

3 Stars

0

2 Stars

0

1 Star

0

User Reviews

(1)
5,0 of 5 stars

5 Stars

5

4 Stars

0

3 Stars

0

2 Stars

0

1 Star

0

Subscribe to bookmark your content

Bookmarks will help you organize our more than 2000 medical videos,
and customize your learning experience for more efficiency and better results.

USMLE™ is a joint program of the Federation of State Medical Boards
(FSMB®) and National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME®). MCAT is a registered
trademark of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).
None of the trademark holders are endorsed by nor affiliated with Lecturio.